Ramblings From Justin Penney

Grandpa is doing a lot better today. Midweek he was not doing well. Pneumonia, bedsores, opiate induced disassociation, and complete loss of appetite. Today he's lucid, alert, and breathing well. My family really started hammering on the hospital to do something to get him healthy enough to get back in to surgery. He was completely uninterested in eating and was then completely weakened by the lack of nutrition. The finally installed a "central line" to deliver IV nutrition. They started breathing treatments, thickened his liquids and gave him a few pints of blood and he's making a great comeback!

Connacht Town hired me to record their performances at O'Malley's Pub in Weston. They played Friday and Saturday night. There were quite a few problems with the technical aspect that unfortunately prevented me from getting what I wanted out of the recording. Most of the problems stemmed from the digital mixer that they have installed. The person that I had been dealing with leading up to this event was not at the shows. He seemed to be up on the mixer and I didn't do much research into it.

We had arranged to have 8 channels sent over and ADAT optical interface and I would run some mics for the remaining items that I needed. I had 8 channels via ADAT but they were post fader. Every change that was made on the front of house made it on to the recording.

To ice the cake, the second day was marred with a lot of friction. I'm not going to go into details but it boiled down to differing expectations of what a Celtic rock band sounds like.

Ryan and I are working with Tommy Donoho; we will be playing a set with him in a folk style arrangement. Drums, upright bass, and guitar. Tommy was over and recorded the songs so Ryan and I can learn them. The recording went really smoothly and I was really happy with the sound we got with such minimal effort!

Now for the minutia. We mowed and trimmed. Jacey pruned the trees and started spraying the cracks in the driveway. I thought it wasn't a good idea for her to be handling chemicals so I took over the spraying. We then went shopping and I bought two new short sleeve button up shirts. Normally, buying shirts would not be a big deal, in this case it is: the are not black. One is dark blue, the other is read and cream plaid. You can commence crapping your pants!

# posted by Justin @ 10:59 PM